uoa  our  reTuge 
Conf  Pam  12mo  #484 

DcnOciEM3S  + 


mo 


tvsf 


George  Washington  Flowers 
Memorial  Collection 

DUKE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


ESTABLISHED  BY  THE 

FAMILY  OF 

COLONEL  FLOWERS 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2011  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/godourrefugestre01moor 


ioir  our  Refuge  ana  Stttngfj  in  fjjis  ffiSm. 


A  DISCOURSE 


BEFORE    THE 


CONQREG^TIONS 


OF    THE 


FIRST  AXD  SECOXD  PRESBVTERIAX  CDCBCHES. 


ON    THE    DAT    OF 


HUMILIATION,  FASTING  AND  PRAYER, 


APPOINTED  BY 


PRESIDENT   DAVIS, 


FRIDAY,  NOV.  15,  1861. 


BY  REV.  T.  V.  MOORE,  D.  D. 


RICHMOND,    VA. 

PUBLISHED    BY    W.    HARGRAVE   WHITE, 

1861. 


»!rflrini\     U^.l "      _1     P 


Richmond,  Friday,  Nov.  15,  1861, 


Rev.  T.  V.  Moore,  D.  D. 


Dear  Sir  : 

The  sermon  you  delivered  this  morn- 
ing,  in  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church,  on  the  occasion  of  our  National 
Fast,  contains  such  a  fearless,  honest  and  forcible  expression  of  truths  essen- 
tial to  our  existence  and  success  in  the  great  struggle  in  which  our  Confede- 
racy is  now  engaged,  that  we  believe  its  presentation  to  the  public  would  be 
of  very  great  advantage. 
We,  therefore,  solicit  a  copy  for  publication. 

Very  respectfully,  yours,  etc., 

ROGER  MARTIN,  D.  II.  WOOD, 

ARCHIBALD  BOLLING,  JAMES  PLEASANTS, 

WM.  P.  MUNFORD,  WM.  F.  TAYLOR, 
JOHN  BAKER  WHITE,  of  Romney,  Va.,     W.  HARGRAVE  WHITE, 

WM.  L.  HILL,  A.  M.  DUPLY, 

R.  C.  MORTON,  WM.  N.  PAGE, 

A.  W.  YENABLE,  of  N.  C,  JAMES  MILLER. 


Richmond,  Nov.  15,  1801. 

Gentlemen : 

If  the  discourse,  of  which  you  so  kindly  speak  in  your  note  of  this 
morning,  will  promote  the  cause  in  which  we  are  all  interested,  I  do  not  feel 
at  liberty  to  withhold  it  from  publication,  and  will,  therefore,  at  my  earliest 
leisure,  give  you  the  manuscript  for  that  purpose. 


I  am,  very  truly,  yours, 


T.  V.  MOORE. 


Messrs.  Roger  Martin,  D.  H.  Wood,  and  others. 


A   PROCLAMATION 


BY   THE   PRESIDENT. 


Whereas,  it  hath  pleased  Almighty  God,  the  Sovereign  Dispenser  of 
events,  to  protect  and  defend  the  Confederate  States  hitherto,  in  their  con- 
flict with  their  enemies,  and  to  be  unto  them  a  shield  : 

And,  whereas,  with  grateful  thanks  we  recognize  His  hand,  and  acknow- 
ledge that  not  unto  us,  but  unto  Him  belongeth  the  victory ;  and  in  humble 
dependence  upon  His  Almighty  strength,  and  trusting  in  the  justness  of  our 
cause,  we  appeal  to  Him  that  He  may  set  at  naught  the  efforts  of  our  ene- 
mies, and  put  them  to  confusion  and  shame  : 

Now,  therefore,  I,  Jefferson  Davis,  President  of  the  Confederate  States, 
in  view  of  the  impending  conflict,  do  hereby  set  apart  "  Friday,"  the  loth 
day  of  November,  as  a  day  of  Fasting,  Humiliation  and  Prayer ;  and  I  do 
hereby  invite  the  Reverend  Clergy  and  the  people  of  these  Confederate 
States  to  repair  on  that  day,  to  their  usual  places  of  public  worship,  and  to 
implore  the  blessing  of  Almighty  God  upon  our  arms,  that  He  may  give  us 
victory  over  our  enemies,  preserve  our  homes  and  altars  from  pollution,  and 
secure  to  us  the  restoration  of  peace  and  prosperity. 

_  x  _  Given  under  my  hand  and  the  seal  of  the  Confederate  States, 

-!  seal.  i-  at  Richmond,  this  thirty-first  day  of  October,  in  the  year  of  our 
^  * — . — '     Lord  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty-one. 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS. 
By  the  President: 

R.  M.  T.  Hunter, 

Secretary  of  State. 


DISCOURSE. 


11  If  thy  people  go  out  to  war  against  their  enemies  by  the  way  that  thou 
shalt  send  them,  and  they  pray  unto  thee  toward  this  city  which  thou  hast 
chosen,  and  the  house  which  I  have  built  for  thy  name ;  then  hear  thou  from 
the  heavens  their  prayer  and  their  supplication,  and  maintain  their  cause." — 
2  Chron.,  vi.  84,  35. 

Four  times  since  the  autumn  leaves  of  last  year  began  to 
fall,  have  we  been  summoned  to  come  before  God  in  humilia- 
tion, fasting  and  prayer.  First,  by  the  Synod  of  Virginia,  in 
November,  before  that  fatal  election  which  opened  Pandora's 
box  in  our  land ;  then,  by  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
in  January,  that  the  cup  of  wrath  which  was  slowly  filling  up, 
might,  if  it  were  possible,  pass  away  ;  then,  by  the  President 
of  the  Confederate  States,  in  June,  that  we  might  be  girded 
for  the  terrible  conflict  that  was  forced  upon  us  ;  and  now,  by 
the  same  authority,  after  we  have  tasted  of  that  cup,  and  felt 
the  first  shock  of  that  conflict.  And  surely  it  has  been  good 
for  us  thus  to  draw  near  to  God  ;  for  hardly  had  the  voice  of 
our  supplication  in  June  died  on  the  air,  when  we  were  sum- 
moned by  our  Congress,  among  its  earliest  official  acts  in  our 
menaced  Capital,  to  return  thanks  to  Almighty  God  for  that 
wonderful  triumph  of  Manassas,  where  the  destinies  of  our 
young  Republic  hung  trembling  in  the  balance  until  God  gave 
us  the  victory,  and  when  His  arm  was  made  bare  for  our  de- 
liverance, so  that  the  most  wicked  were  compelled  to  acknow- 
ledge it.  And  now,  as  we  look  daily  for  other  and  heavier 
blows  upon  our  assailed  and  outraged  country,  assaults  by  land 
and  by  sea,  it  surely  becomes  us  to  approach  the  mercy  seat 


6  DISCOURSE. 

again,  and  ask  that  God  would  still  give  wisdom  to  our  councils 
and  success  to  our  arms ;  that  He  would  grant  unto  us,  that 
we,  being  delivered  out  of  the  hand  of  our  enemies,  and  all 
that  hate  us,  might  serve  Him  without  fear,  in  holiness  and 
righteousness  before  Him,  all  the  days  of  our  life. 

And  we  are  encouraged  thus  to  pray  by  the  implied  promise 
of  the  text,  that  when  war  comes  upon  a  people  who  have  con- 
secrated themselves  to  God,  if  they  shall  penitently  pray  to- 
wards His  high  and  holy  sanctuary,  He  will  hear  from  heaven 
their  supplication,  and  maintain  their  cause.  Your  prayerful 
attention  is,  therefore,  asked  to  three  leading  thoughts  implied 
in  this  text. 

I.  War  is  a  part  of  the  Agency  by  which  God  Dis- 
ciplines Nations. 

That  war  is  an  evil,  and  often,  a  sore  and  terrible  evil,  and 
a  thing  at  variance  with  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel,  is  what  no 
Christian  can  for  a  moment  doubt.  But  these  facts  do  not 
place  it  beyond  the  employment  of  God,  as  a  means  of  work- 
ing out  His  purposes  on  earth.  Sickness,  suffering,  famine  and 
pestilence,  are  also  evils,  yet  God  employs  them  in  this  way, 
and  having  declared  that  "  the  wrath  of  man  shall  praise  Him," 
He  may  also  use  war  to  effect  His  designs  among  nations. 
Had  there  been  no  sin,  there  would  have  been  no  war,  as  there 
would  have  been  no  suffering  of  any  other  kind ;  but  as  long 
as  there  is  sin  in  the  world,  so  long  may  we  expect  to  find  this 
huge,  colossal  scourge — this  Moloch  of  evils — among  men. 
Indeed,  our  Lord  expressly  declares  that  wars  and  rumors  of 
wars  shall  be  among  the  signs  that  shall  herald  the  end,  so  that 
our  fond  dreams  of  a  universal  peace,  when  in  millennial  bless- 
edness, men  shall  "  beat  their  swords  into  plough-shares,  and 
their  spears  into  pruning-hooks,"  may  be  realized  only  in  those 
final  scenes  that  lie  beyond  the  great  day,  and  not  on  this  side 
of  it,  "  in  the  new  heavens  and  new  earth,  wherein  dwelleth 
righteousness." 

But  war  is  not  an  unmitigated  evil,  terrible  as  its  ravages 
are.     It  is  like  the  hurricane  and  the  flood  in  Nature,  deso- 


DISCOURSE.  7 

lating  and  terrific,  yet  accomplishing  ends  in  the  physical 
world  that  can  be  accomplished  by  no  other  agencies.  The 
brooding  miasma,  the  tainted  air  and  the  poisoned  water  are 
swept  away,  and  there  are  left  behind  a  purer  air  and  a  richer 
soil  than  could  have  existed  without  this  purgation  of  tempest 
and  flood.  Similar  services  are  rendered  by  the  hurricane  of 
war,  in  spite  of  its  evils. 

A  long  course  of  peace  and  prosperity,  acting  on  our  de- 
praved nature,  tends  to  emasculate  and  corrupt  a  people.  As 
wealth  increases,  unless  religion  advances  with  it,  luxury  grows 
apace.  Mammon-worship  soon  becomes  supreme,  everything 
assumes  a  money  standard,  and  corruption  creeps  slowly  into 
the  very  heart  of  a  people.  The  refined  and  intelligent  with- 
draw from  political  life,  either  to  amass  wealth  in  business,  or 
to  enjoy  it  in  scholarly  ease,  leaving  the  direction  of  public 
affairs  in  the  hands  of  brawling  demagogues ;  and  the  fiery 
energy  of  youth  is  expended  in  revelry  and  dissipation. 
There  grows  gradually  up  a  worldly  and  Epicurean  expe- 
diency that  sneers  at  lofty  heroism  and  high  principle  as 
mere  Quixotic  romance ;  a  hard  and  brassy  materialism  that 
measures  everything  by  the  standard  of  dollars  and  cents  and 
rejects  all  that  will  not  pay  in  this  coin ;  and  a  secret,  but 
potent  scepticism  as  to  the  very  existence  of  anything  like 
virtue,  honor,  unselfishness  or  truth,  believing  that  every  man 
at  last  has  his  price.  The  general  prevalence  of  this  feeling 
will  at  last  sap  the  very  foundations  of  public  and  private 
morality,  enthrone  a  shameless  selfishness  in  the  high  places 
of  life,  which  in  the  end  will  be  guilty  of  some  outrages  on 
common  justice  and  right  so  flagrant  as  to  provoke  resistance, 
the  recoil  of  whose  violence  may  lay  the  whole  fabric  of 
society  in  ruin. 

War  tends  to  break  up  this  mammon-worship,  effeminacy 
and  selfish  expediency,  to  show  that  there  are  nobler  things  to 
be  contended  for  in  life  than  mere  material  advancement;  that 
the  chief  end  of  man  is  not  to  make  money ;  that  there  are 
great  principles  of  belief,  and  great  elements  of  moral  cha- 


8  DISCOURSE. 

racter  which  underlie  all  human  prosperity,  and  the  sacrifice 
of  which  will,  in  the  end,  undermine  even  material  greatness ; 
and  that  heroism,  daring,  unselfishness,  and  a  sacrificing  pa- 
triotism, are  living  realities,  and  not  mere  poetic  romances. 
As  men  contend  for  great  political  or  religious  rights,  they 
have  a  clearer  perception  of  the  nature  and  value  of  all  hu- 
man rights ;  and  as  they  endure  hardship,  hunger,  cold  and 
danger,  in  defence  of  these  rights,  there  is  generated  a  sturdier 
manliness,  and  a  loftier  tone  of  character  that  will  descend  in 
kindling  memories  of  noble  deeds,  at  once  a  heritage  and  a 
model  to  coming  generations,  inspiring  them  with  a  generous 
ambition  to  emulate  the  bright  example  of  their  worthy  sires. 
It  is  thus  that  national  character  is  formed.  It  is  thus  that 
vigor,  enterprise  and  honor  are  breathed  into  the  heart  of  a 
people,  and  that  the  hardy,  simple  and  manly  virtues  are 
worked  into  the  very  sources  of  national  life.  It  was  thus 
that  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth  gathered  its  enduring  strength 
after  the  effeminacy  of  its  Egyptian  life,  by  battling  with  the 
Canaanites,  and  purchasing  their  God-given  homes  and  fields 
with  their  swords  and  spears.  It  was  thus  that  the  Greek 
republics  attained  their  athletic  sinew  and  symmetry,  and 
quickened  into  its  beautiful  life  their  immortal  genius.  It  was 
thus  that  the  wolf-nursed  colony  of  the  Tiber  became  at  last 
imperial  Home,  stamping  in  lines  of  iron  her  mighty  image  on 
all  nations  and  on  all  time.  And  it  has  been  thus  that  God 
has  caused  the  roots  of  every  enduring  nationality  to  strike 
deep,  and  grow  strong,  as  its  branches  have  wrestled  with  the 
storms  of  war.  As  no  nation  has  ever  risen  to  greatness  with- 
out this  stern  tutorage,  it  seems  but  a  simple  induction  from 
the  facts  of  universal  history,  that  in  a  fallen  world  like  ours, 
war  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  agency  by  which  God  discip- 
lines nations. 

These  views  furnish  no  apology  for  an  offensive  war,  which 
is  a  crime  as  well  as  an  evil,  but  they  do  furnish  an  encour- 
agement to  those  on  whom  a  defensive  war  is  forced;  for  they 
show  that  what  is  an  undoubted  evil  may  be,  and  has  been, 


DISCOURSE.  9 

overruled  by  God  to  good  results.  Man  means  it  for  evil,  God 
controls  it  for  good.  It  comes  as  a  chastening  for  sins,  and 
"becomes  a  blessing  by  extirpating  those  sins,  and  bringing  to 
a  hardier  life  the  corresponding  virtues.  We  can  thus  see 
some  of  the  reasons  for  that  general  fact  alluded  to  by  Solo- 
mon in  the  text,  when  he  assumes  that  God's  people  will  go 
forth  to  war  by  "  a  way  in  which  God  shall  send  them,"  as 
if  war  was  one  of  the  inevitable  incidents  in  the  history  even 
of  a  people  belonging  to  God,  and  under  His  special  protec- 
tion, and  an  incident  arranged  by  His  special  and  foreordaining 
providence. 

In  the  war  now  upon  us  there  are  special  considerations 
bearing  on  this  point. 

(1.)  One  of  the  sins  of  the  Southern  country  has  been  a  lazy 
dependence  on  the  industry  of  the  North  for  what  we  might 
have  done,  and  ought  to  have  done  for  ourselves.  "VYe  have 
looked  to  them  to  manufacture  everything — from  a  man-of-war 
to  a  lucifer  match;  allowing  them  to  come  and  carry  away 
our  cotton,  wool,  iron,  lead,  copper,  coal,  hemp,  and  our  very 
cord-wood,  to  return  them  in  manufactured  forms,  whilst  we 
paid  not  only  for  the  manufacture,  but  for  this  double  trans- 
portation, and  brokerage,  commission,  percentage,  exchange, 
insurance,  discount,  storage,  and  a  list  of  charges  whose  name 
was  legion,  for  the  privilege  of  being  dependent  on  them  for 
the  very  necessaries  of  life,  as  we  are  now  learning  to  our 
cost.  Add  to  these  the  tribute  that  was  paid  for  papers, 
periodicals  and  books,  boarding  schools,  seminaries  and  col- 
leges, that  moulded  our  opinions,  and  the  enormous  expendi- 
tures of  travel  to  watering  places,  hotels,  cities,  and  other 
resorts,  that  moulded  our  fashions  and  manners,  and  we  have 
but  a  faint  conception  of  that  condition  of  provincial  depen- 
dence to  which  half  a  century  of  fishery-bounty,  navigation, 
tariff,  revenue  and  commercial  laws,  written  and  unwritten, 
had  reduced  this  broad  and  opulent  region.  So  enormous  was 
the  tribute  paid  in  this  way  for  things  wholly  unnecessary,  that 
we  shall  save  probably  the  entire  expense  of  the  war  by  simply 


10  DISCOURSE. 

keeping  at  home  the  wealth  that  would  otherwise  have  been 
sent  to  build  up  the  prosperity  of  those  who  would  use  that 
very  prosperity  as  an  argument  to  prove  the  superiority  of 
their  institutions  to  ours. 

Now,  had  a  peaceable  separation  been  effected,  this  depen- 
dence would  have  continued,  until  with  overgrown  wealth  on 
one  side,  and  exhausted  poverty  on  the  other,  that  very  sepa- 
ration would  have  been  our  ruin.  But  separated  by  the  con- 
vulsive throes  of  war,  all  these  ties  must  be  broken,  all  these 
channels  filled  up ;  domestic  industry  must  spring  up  to  meet 
the  very  necessities  of  life ;  manufacturing  and  commercial 
independence  be  firmly  established,  without  which  political 
independence  would  be  a  sceptre  without  a  kingdom,  a  sword 
without  a  hand  to  wield  it.  Thus  the  very  blockade,  cruel  as 
it  is  designed  to  be,  will  be  a  blessing ;  and  should  another 
war  come  upon  us,  it  will  not  find  us,  as  this  one  did,  without 
a  mill  or  a  manufactory  to  furnish  powder  and  caps  for  the 
muskets  of  our  soldiers. 

And  in  nothing  does  the  suicidal  folly  of  this  war  on  the 
part  of  the  United  States  Government  appear  more  vividly 
than  in  the  light  of  this  fact.  It  proposes  to  make  us  friends 
by  hunting  us  down  as  enemies ;  to  restore  our  love  and 
loyalty  by  means  that  must  naturally  produce  the  most  undy- 
ing hate ;  to  drag  us  back,  all  bleeding  and  crushed,  to  the 
iron  embrace  of  a  huge  enginery  of  coercive  power,  to  illus- 
trate the  theory  of  free  government;  to  ravage  our  coasts, 
and  slaughter  our  sons,  and  distress  our  households,  in  order 
to  restore  our  allegiance  to  those  who  have  thus  cruelly, 
wantonly  and  bitterly  oppressed  us.  It  professes  to  regard 
slave  territory  as  an  unmitigated  curse,  and  yet,  rather  than 
allow  this  alleged  curse  to  be  separated  from  it,  will  raise  half 
a  million  of  men  and  half  a  billion  of  money  that  it  may 
grasp  this  accursed  soil  with  a  hand  of  iron,  even  though  it 
thus  makes  it  but  one  vast  field  of  blood.  Surely  the  lessons 
of  all  past  history  have  been  in  vain  if  such  means  do  not 
engender  a  hate,  a  deep,  burning  and  deathless  memory  of 


DISCOURSE.  11 

wrong  and  cruelty,  that  shall  remain  in  its  engendered  ani- 
mosities a  wide  and  yawning  gulf  for  generations  to  come. 
These  two  sections,  however  this  war  may  end,  shall 

"  Stand  aloof,  the  scars  remaining 

Like  cliffs  that  have  been  rent  asunder, 
A  dreary  sea  shall  roll  between, 

But  neither  heat,  nor  frost,  nor  thunder, 
Can  wholly  do  away  I  ween, 
The  marks  of  which  once  hath  been." 

The  sword  may  cut  apart,  but  can  never  unite. 

( 2.)  But  there  is  another  effect  of  the  war,  not  less  important 
than  this  one.  The  deep,  original  cause  of  that  mighty  disrup- 
tion that  is  now  going  forward  was  the  diversity  of  interests  that 
were  included  in  a  single  government,  interests  so  vast,  and 
connected  with  other  diversities,  social,  historical  and  political, 
themselves  so  important,  that  all  could  not  be  harmonized  under 
a  single  organization,  without  an  amount  of  wisdom,  justice 
and  statesmanship  but  rarely  found  in  any  administration. 
Similar  diversities  remain  in  the  separated  section,  which  in 
time  must  have  produced  the  same  result  unless  prevented 
by  some  powerful  agency.  The  jealousies  even  now  exhibited, 
which  every  good  man  should  frown  down  as  the  worst  kind 
of  treason ;  and  the  unkind  detractions  that  have  been  uttered 
against  our  own  great  old  Commonwealth,  without  whose  aid, 
whatever  may  be  said  about  her,  the  success  of  this  struggle 
would  have  been  a  hopeless  impossibility,  all  prove  that  these 
divisive  tendencies  are  at  work,  and  that  one  of  our  greatest 
dangers  was  in  the  diversities  that  existed  between  border, 
and  cotton,  and  gulf,  and  western  States,  producing  undue 
friction  in  the  working  of  government.  What  our  young 
Republic  needed  was  a  feeling  of  oneness,  a  broad,  deep  na- 
tional unity,  binding  together  the  separate  sovereignties  of  the 
Confederacy,  so  that  whilst,  politically,  they  shall  be  "dis- 
tinct as  the  billows,"  yet,  nationally,  they  shall  be  "one  as 
the  sea."  Although  the  common  institution  of  domestic 
slavery  is  a  powerful  bond  of  union,  especially  in  view  of 
the  mighty  hostility  against  it  that  compresses  its  adherents 


12  DISCOURSE. 

together,  yet  even  this  could  not  have  created  this  national 
unity,  as  we  had  it,  under  a  peaceful  separation.  Had  the 
original  thirteen  colonies  separated  peacefully  from  Great 
Britain  they  would  never  have  made  that  e  pluribus  unum 
under  which  they  advanced  to  such  peerless  greatness,  until 
the  spirit  of  that  Revolutionary  struggle  became  extinct  in  a 
generation  "that  knew  not  Joseph."  In  the  same  way  it  was 
necessary  that  these  Confederate  States  should  be  put  into  the 
furnace  of  war,  that  they  might  be  welded  into  one  great, 
united  and  loving  people,  fused  together  by  common  weak- 
ness, common  suffering,  and  common  triumphs;  having  a 
common  heritage  of  grief,  and  a  common  heritage  of  glory ; 
mingling  the  blood  of  the  border  States  with  that  of  the 
gulf  and  the  great  valley  on  the  same  battle-fields ;  garnering 
their  precious  dust  in  the  same  graves ;  mingling  their  tears 
over  the  same  hallowed  sods ;  and  thus  creating  for  all  future 
time,  memories  so  deep  and  so  enduring  as  to  mould  into  one 
warm,  living  and  enduring  whole,  this  new  birth  into  the 
great  sisterhood  of  nationalities. 

( 3.)  There  is  another  result  of  this  war,  which  as  far  as  it 
exists,  is  a  yet  higher  one  than  that  just  stated.  War  is 
usually  a  vast  demoralizer,  and  all  religious  feeling  withers 
under  its  baleful  breath.  And,  to  some  extent,  this  is  true  of 
this  war,  as  we  mournfully  know.  And  in  this  aspect  the 
act  of  our  Congress  in  virtually  degrading  the  office  of  Chap- 
lain, by  making  it  the  only  one  in  the  army  whose  rank  and 
pay  were  cut  down,  and  after  two  reductions,  fixing  it  at  a 
rate  that  excludes  from  it  any  man  with  a  family,  who  has 
not  private  means  of  his  own,  a  thing  not  very  common  with 
clergymen — this  marked  and  seemingly  invidious  distinction 
of  this  office,  I  feel  bound  to  say  kindly,  but  plainly,  was  at 
least  an  unfortunate  act,  if  not  more  blameable.  In  an  army 
of  volunteers,  like  ours,  a  good  Chaplain  is  just  as  important 
as  a  good  Captain  or  a  good  Surgeon,  for  he  is  adapted  to 
meet  those  moral  evils  arising  from  inaction,  discontent,  weari- 
ness and  home-sickness  that  are  often  far  more  injurious  than 
the  dangers  of  the  battle-field.     And  we  know  of  no  reason 


DISCOURSE.  13 

arising  from  incompetency  or  dereliction  of  duty  in  those  who 
have  filled  the  one  office  for  any  such  stigma,  which  does  not 
exist  in  a  twofold,  if  not  a  tenfold  degree  with  the  occupants 
of  the  others.  It  is  a  false  economy  that  starves  the  soul  to 
feed  the  body,  even  in  an  army.  The  eagle  that  robbed  the 
altar  of  its  sacrificial  flesh  fired  her  own  nest  by  the  living 
coals  that  adhered  to  it,  and  so  will  it  ever  be  in  depriving 
religion  of  its  honest  rights  in  any  human  organization. 
Hence  we  feel  bound  to  say  plainly,  that  this  was  a  wrong, 
a  short-sighted  and  suicidal  wrong,  although  we  also  believe 
an  undesigned  and  inadvertent  wrong,  which  we  hope  will  be 
remedied  as  soon  as  it  can  be  reached  by  competent  authority. 
If  the  finances  of  the  government  will  not  warrant  the  em- 
ployment of  men  of  experience  and  mature  age  in  this  office, 
it  were  better  to  abolish  it,  and  leave  the  spiritual  wants  of 
the  soldier  entirely  to  the  voluntary  action  of  the  people. 
But  if  the  office  is  to  be  retained  at  all,  it  ought  to  be  put  on 
an  equality  with  other  offices  of  the  same  importance. 

But  in  spite  of  all  these  things,  I  believe,  that  there  has 
never  been  an  army  since  the  time  of  Cromwell,  in  which 
there  was  a  more  pervading  sense  of  the  power  of  God  than 
our  own.  A  brave,  but  irreligious  officer  remarked  to  me 
a  few  days  ago,  we  may  well  adopt  the  language  of  the  good 
book,  "If  it  had  not  been  the  Lord  who  was  on  our  side,  now 
may  Israel  say,  when  men  rose  up  against  us,  they  had  swal- 
lowed us  up  quick."  And  this  is  the  solemn  conviction  of 
thousands,  even  the  most  wicked.  The  resources  of  the 
mighty  organization,  whose  stupendous  gage  of  battle  we 
fearlessly  took  up,  were  so  vast  in  men,  money,  munitions 
of  war,  forts,  fleets  and  armies,  that  unless  God  had  been 
with  us  we  must  have  been  crushed.  When  we  saw  the 
bloodless  achievements  of  Sumter,  Gosport,  Harper's  Ferry, 
and  the  river  batteries ;  when  we  saw  an  unprotected  woman 
sent  forth  as  it  would  seem  by  a  Divine  impulse  to  venture 
alone  in  imminent  peril  to  give  the  information  that  led  to  the 
first  victory  on  our  soil,  which  struck  the  key-note  to  all  the 
rest ;  when  we  saw  boys  yet  warm  from  their  mother's  hearts 


14  DISCOURSE. 

stand  like  veterans  in  the  iron  sleet  of  Bethel,  and  college  lads 
from  our  quiet  lowland  homes  make  the  gorges  of  Rich  Moun- 
tain a  very  Thermopylae ;  when  we  saw  squadrons  of  volunteers 
stand,  "like  a  stone  wall,"  a  sweep  like  an  avenging  hurricane 
over  the  red  plains  of  Manassas  and  Springfield,  or  the  green 
hills  of  Carnifax  Ferry,  Belmont,  and  Leesburg;  when  we  saw 
the  very  winds  and  waves,  the  very  "  stars  in  their  courses  " 
conspiring  to  bring  disaster  on  our  enemies ;  when  all  human 
calculation  must  have  predicted  the  exact  opposite ;  we  cannot 
wonder  that  even  ungodly  men  have  been  compelled  to  pause 
and  say,  "this  is  the  finger  of  God."  And  we  cannot  wonder 
that  many  a  brave  man,  as  he  saw  these  seeming  tokens  of 
the  ascending  and  descending  angels,  and  the  protecting 
presence  of  God,  has  found  these  battle-fields  to  be  Bethels, 
and  said :  "  Surely  the  Lord  was  in  this  place,  and  I  knew  it 
not;"  that  many  a  dear  child,  while  pacing  his  lonely  round 
as  sentinel,  or  standing  on  his  perilous  post  as  picket,  beneath 
the  silent  stars,  has  found  his  place  to  be  a  Manassah,  "  a 
forgetting  "  of  the  wild  delusions  of  sin,  and  a  solemn  rising  to 
his  memory  of  words  that  he  has  heard,  amid  the  sweet  scenes 
of  home,  from  lips,  some  of  which  are  silent  in  the  grave,  and 
others  of  which  may  be  even  then,  in  the  deep  silence  of  mid- 
night, moving  in  wakeful  prayer  for  the  brave  and  beloved  boy 
who  is  far,  far  away.  The  many  conversions  in  camp,  the 
prayer-meetings  in  soldiers'  tents,  of  which  we  have  heard, 
and  the  letters  we  have  seen  breathing  emotions  of  piety  that 
have  been  awaked  by  the  exposures  and  sufferings  of  the  army, 
induce  us  to  believe  that  this  war  will  lead  many  a  soul  to  the 
Cross  that  might  otherwise  have  perished  in  impenitency. 

II.  The  proper  resort  of  a  People  in  time  of  War  is 
to  God. 

All  history  proves,  from  Abraham  and  his  armed  servants, 
and  Gideon's  three  hundred  men,  through  Marathon,  to  the 
Spanish  armada,  and  later  struggles  of  heroic  people  for  their 
rights,  that  "  the  race  is  not  to  the  swift,  nor  the  battle  to 
the  strong."     God  gives  victory  as  He  pleases  to  carry  out 


DISCOURSE.  15 

His  great  and  holy  purposes  in  human  history.  Hence  the 
instinctive  resort  of  every  right-hearted  people  at  such  a  time 
is  to  that  High  and  Mighty  One,  "  who  doeth  his  will  in  the 
armies  of  heaven  and  among  the  inhabitants  of  earth."  This 
resort  is  proper  for  several  reasons. 

(1.)  That  the  sins  which  have  caused  the  chastening  may 
be  removed. 

As  these  sins  have  been  set  forth  on  former  occasions,  we 
will  not  repeat  the  enumeration,  but  only  say  that,  until  they 
are  repented  of  and  forsaken,  God  will  continue  to  smite  us. 
Hence  we  should  come  to-day  with  honest  penitence,  and, 
taking  words  of  truth  and  sincerity  upon  our  lips,  should  cry 
to  him,  "Turn  us,  0  God  of  our  salvation,  and  cause  thine 
anger  against  us  to  cease,  and  hear  us  from  thy  holy 
heavens." 

(2.)  That  ive  may  be  delivered  from  evils  that  must 
weaken  us. 

There  are  evils  inevitable  to  war  from  which  we  cannot 
expect  to  escape.  We  must  expect  to  find  personal  ambition 
in  the  guise  of  patriotism ;  itch  for  office,  with  its  horse-leech 
cry  of  "give,  give;"  favoritism  and  nepotism,  by  which  the 
sons,  relations  and  friends  of  those  in  office  will  be  placed 
over  the  heads  of  better  and  older  men  who  are  unable  to 
command  this  kind  of  patronage,  and  must,  therefore,  drudge 
in  humbler  and  harder  positions ;  wastefulness  in  the  use  of 
public  funds  and  the  granting  of  public  contracts ;  blunders 
in  movements,  both  civil  and  military,  that  are  hard  to  ex- 
plain;  provoking  circumlocutions  and  red-tape  delays  in  the 
transaction  of  public  business;  insolence  and  petty  tyranny 
in  men  raised  from  obscurity  and  dressed  in  a  little  brief 
authority,  who  lord  it  with  arrogance  and  sometimes  with 
cruelty  over  braver  and  better  men  placed  under  their  com- 
mand; heartless  brutality  in  drunken  surgeons  and  drunken 
nurses  allowing  sick  men  to  pine  and  suffer,  and  even  to  die 
from  sheer  and  inexcusable  neglect ;  drunkenness  in  the  ranks, 
as  well  as  among  the  officers,  preparing  many  a  gallant  man 
for  disgrace  and  defeat  in  battle,  and  a  drunkard's  grave  when 


16  DISCOURSE. 

the  war  is  ended;  profanity;  gambling;  pillage  and  pecula- 
tion at  least  in  small  matters ;  all  these  evils  are  well  nigh 
inevitable  in  a  time  of  war,  with  our  poor  fallen  nature  as  it 
is,  and  can  only  be  diminished  by  looking  to  that  God  before 
whom  we  bow  this  day  in  reverent  supplication. 

But  there  are  some  evils  that  we  had  no  right  to  expect, 
and  that,  therefore,  as  far  as  they  do  exist,  are  the  more 
difficult  to  bear.  We  had  no  right  to  expect  that  flaming  and 
furious  patriots  of  twelve  months  ago,  whose  voice  was  then  for 
war,  denouncing  all  who  could  not  go  as  fast  and  far  as  they, 
should  now  be  as  meek  and  as  mute  as  mice,  leaving  to  others 
the  burdens,  sacrifices  and  dangers  of  this  contest  when  it  has 
really  come.  We  had  no  right  to  expect  that  they  who  have 
been  so  long  sneering  at  Yankee  greed  and  Yankee  meanness, 
should  emulate  this  ignoble  example  by  filching  the  funds 
that  the  hard  taxation  of  a  burdened  people  have  generously 
given  to  their  governments,  by  usurious  contracts,  and  exor- 
bitant charges  for  supplies  which  the  poor  soldier  often  finds 
to  his  cost  were  made  to  sell  and  not  to  use ;  buying  up  the 
very  necessaries  of  life  to  pile  enormous  profits  on  them,  so 
that  whilst  brave  men  are  driving  off  the  hungry  invader 
abroad,  at  the  point  of  the  sword,  their  straitened  families 
find  the  wolf  at  the  door  in  the  form  of  the  hungry  specu- 
lator, who  spares  not  even  medicine  for  the  sick,  and  will 
wring  his  percentage  out  of  the  very  agonies  of  the  suffer- 
ing; trafficking  in  the  hunger,  cold  and  nakedness  of  the 
soldier  while  living,  and  speculating  upon  his  very  shroud 
and  coffin  and  grave  when  dead;  blockading  our  homes  by 
land  as  really,  as  wickedly,  and  as  heartlessly  as  our  ene- 
mies are  blockading  them  by  sea ;  bribing  officials  to  act  as 
accomplices  with  them  in  their  schemes  to  obtain  undisputed 
control  of  a  market;  creating  needless  panics  and  needless 
pressures,  that  they  may  wring  from  a  groaning  and  helpless 
community  the  hard  earnings  of  the  poor  on  whom  these 
exactions  must  fall  most  heavily ;  and  whilst  a  struggling 
country  is  bleeding  at  every  pore,  instead  of  seeking  to 
staunch  that  blood,  virtually  gathering  it  up  drop  by  drop 


DISCOURSE.  17 

to  sell  like  butcher's  meat  in  the  shambles,  and  coin  it  into 
gold  ;  acting  a  treason  more  deadly  than  an  armed  aid  to  our 
enemies,  by  compelling  many  a  poor  man  who  once  calculated 
the  value  of  the  Union,  to  begin  to  calculate  the  value  of  dis- 
union, and  ask  what  have  we  gained  by  escaping  the  leeches 
and  blood-suckers  of  one  Confederacy,  only  to  fall  into  the 
fangs  of  the  sharks  and  cormorants  of  another;  surely,  surely, 
we  had  a  right  to  expect  that  in  a  struggle  so  sublime,  so 
tremendous,  and  so  desperate  as  this,  we  should  have  been 
safe  from  the  cruel  greed  of  such  hungry  Shylocks,  such 
human  vultures  as  these.  And  if  in  any  cases  we  have  been 
disappointed  in  this  reasonable  expectation,  it  but  creates 
another  reason  for  coming  before  Him  whose  blood  was  sold 
by  his  own  chosen  companion  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  to 
pray  that  He  would  not  only  deliver  us  from  the  Ahithopels 
abroad,  but  also,  and  even  more  earnestly,  from  the  Iscariots 
at  home. 

(3.)    That  we  may  have  direct  strength  from  on  High  for 
this  conflict. 

Did  time  permit,  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  the  religion 
which  fits  men  for  any  duty,  suffering  and  danger,  must  fit 
them  for  the  duties,  sufferings  and  dangers  of  war ;  and  that 
he  who  believes  that  God  is  with  him,  and  that  the  field  of 
death  will  be  to  him  only  the  vestibule  of  heaven,  must  move 
down  to  the  dread  ordeal  of  battle  with  a  heart  all  the- 
stronger  for  this  faith  and  hope;  that  the  religion  which 
breathed  such  heroism  into  the  battalions  of  Gustavus ;  that 
made  feeble  Holland  an  over-match  for  the  proud  chivalry  of 
Spain ;  that  nerved  the  iron  men  of  Cromwell  to  such  deeds 
of  daring  prowess ;  that  has  inscribed  the  name  of  Huguenot 
and  Covenanter  among  the  world's  heroes  ;  that  nerved  the 
hearts  of  so  many  brave  men  in  our  first  Revolutionary 
struggle ;  that  has  written  upon  her  spiritual  muster-roll  such 
heroic  names  as  Vicars  and  Havelock ;  that  has  adorned  the 
character  of  some  in  our  own  army,  whose  glorious  work  is 
not  yet  completed,  and  whose  names  our  children  will  utter 
with  enthusiastic  love ;  that  such  a  religion  as  this  should  be 

2 


18  DISCOURSE. 

a  yet  loftier  spring  of  action  than  even  that  wild  fanaticism 
■whose  religious  faith  made  the  Moslem  arms  resistless  for  so 
many  centuries.  For  such  strength  then  as  it  gives  to  suffer 
and  wait  at  home,  as  well  as  to  suffer  and  strike  in  the  field, 
we  should  come  this  day,  saying,  in  the  words  of  the  old 
Hebrew  battle-cry,  "  Some  trust  in  chariots  and  some  in 
horses,  but  we  will  remember  the  name  of  the  Lord  our  God; 
and  in  the  name  of  our  God  will  we  set  up  our  banners." 

III.  We  should  then  gird  ourselves  for  this  Con- 
flict IN  THE   HOPE  THAT    GOD  WILL  MAINTAIN  OUR    CAUSE. 

Had  we  far  less  to  excite  our  hopes  in  this  struggle  than  we 
have,  there  is  a  stern  necessity  upon  us  to  go  forward  to  it  which 
we  cannot  escape.  .  There  is  nothing  now  left  us  but  a  death- 
grapple  for  very  existence.  An  institution  has  been  planted 
on  our  soil,  the  ethical  nature  of  which,  as  a  relation  in  human 
society,  it  is  too  late  to  argue,  for  God  has  recognized  it  twice 
in  the  Decalogue,  and  devoted  an  entire  epistle  to  an  incident 
connected  with  it  in  the  New  Testament,  without  hinting  at 
its  unlawfulness.  Like  all  human  institutions,  it  has  its  evils, 
evils  which  the  ceaseless  assaults  of  its  enemies  give  no  oppor- 
tunity to  correct,  and  yet  under  its  influence  more  members 
of  Christian  Churches  have  been  enrolled  from  a  race  whose 
ancestors  were  heathen,  than  has  been  done  in  the  same  length 
of  time  by  all  the  missionary  societies  on  earth,  much  good  as 
they  have  done;  and  under  it  there  has  been  secured  more 
temporal  comfort  to  the  slaves  than  has  been  reached  by  any 
corresponding  class  of  laborers  on  earth.  There  is  one  fact 
that  speaks  volumes  on  this  point,  that  in  this  bitter  struggle, 
whilst  every  possible  agency  has  been  used  upon  them,  for 
one  colored  man  who  has  been  unfaithful  to  the  South  there 
have  been  ten  whites ;  that  whilst  a  Washington  was  fighting 
and  dying  in  Western  Virginia  against  white  traitors  born  on 
her  soil,  his  servants  were  faithfully  tending  the  fields  of  Mount 
Vernon,  and  trying  to  secure  for  him  their  proceeds  from  the 
pillaging  vandals,  within  the  sound  of  whose  drums  Old  Ga- 
briel and  his  fellow-servants  remained  faithful  to  their  master ; 


DISCOURSE.  19 

and  that,  in  one  of  the  hottest  battles  on  the  Kanawha,  a 
servant  begged  and  obtained  the  privilege  of  fighting  by  the 
side  of  his  master,  whilst  that  master's  own  blood  relations 
were  fighting  on  the  other  side.  Nor  are  these  cases  few  or 
far  between,  but  enough  to  show  that  we  have  often  more 
reason  to  trust  the  black  face  of  the  honest  servant  who  fears 
God  and  loves  his  master,  than  the  black  heart  of  many  a 
snivelling  white  man,  whose  god  is  a  dollar,  and  who  would 
sell  not  only  his  country,  but  his  very  soul,  if  need  be,  for  a 
fat  office  and  a  bloated  salary.  Let  this  be  recorded  to  the 
honor  of  the  black  mar/,  and  let  it  be  remembered  to  his  ad- 
vantage when  the  struggle  is  over,  as  we  believe  it  will  be, 
and  let  it  stand  as  an  answer  to  some  of  the  slanders  that  have 
been  heaped  on  this  institution. 

Against  this  institution,  and  thus  both  the  races  that  are 
connected  with  it,  has  been  waged  a  hostility  whose  steady 
course  has  never  faltered  nor  turned  aside.  There  is  some- 
thing portentous  in  the  rise  and  growth  of  this  anti-slavery 
Hydra  with  which  we  are  now  struggling.  Spawned  in  the 
huge  Serbonian  bog  of  French  infidelity  and  radicalism,  it  was 
a  fitting  coincidence  that  the  same  year  which  witnessed  the 
first  development  of  the  one  in  the  French  Revolution,  should 
have  witnessed  the  first  development  of  the  other  in  the 
seizure  of  that  magnificent  North-Western  territory,  which 
the  credulous  generosity  of  Virginia  bestowed  as  a  free  gift 
to  the  Federal  Government,  to  rear  up  on  her  border  a  deadly 
enemy,  by  the  Ordinance  of  1787.  Again  did  the  Hydra  de- 
mand and  receive  a  fresh  accession  to  its  bulk  in  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  where  rights  that  were  solemnly  guaranteed  by 
the  Louisiana  treaty  were  ruthlessly  disregarded,  and  yielded 
to  the  clamors  of  this  voracious  and  growing  monster.  Again 
and  again  was  it  swollen  by  new  gorges  of  new  territory, 
purchased  by  the  common  blood  and  treasure  of  all  the  States, 
and,  therefore,  rightfully  belonging  to  the  whole,  and  not  to 
any  of  its  parts.  Grown  by  these  enormous  meals,  and  stimu- 
lated by  the  secret  working  of  foreign  emissaries,  who  saw  in 
this  agent  the  serpent  that  might  strangle  this  mighty  Repub- 


20  DISCOURSE. 

lie  in  its  infancy,  it  planned  a  more  deadly  assault  on  the 
object  of  its  hate.     Suborning  every  avenue  to  the  creation  of 
public  opinion,  it  was  able  at  last  to  inoculate  vast  masses  of 
men  with  its   envenomed   feeling,   until   having  nullified  «the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  ;  divided  churches ;  broken 
up  benevolent  agencies  ;  embroiled  States  ;  stirred  up  Kansas 
and   John    Brown   raids :    bespattered   the   very   Bible   with 
its  virus ;   breathed  its  poison   into  the  very  Gospel  of  the 
Son  of   God,  and  filled  its  pulpits  with  a  religion  of  hate; 
hissing  its  venom  from  a  million  heads  and  through  a  million 
tongues,  from  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  to  the  penny 
pamphlet,  it  then  proposed,  as  its  coup-de-main,  to  coil  itself 
in  one  huge,  stifling  cordon  of  hostile  settlements  around  the 
territory  of  the  Confederate  States,  so  that  having  crushed 
this  hated  institution  to  death  by  its  tightening  folds,  these 
States  might  be  left  to  the  terrible  doom  of  the  ancient  crimi- 
nal, when  a  living  body  was   chained  to   a  dead   corpse  to 
perish  by  a  slow,  loathsome  and  inevitable   death.     Against 
this  dreadful  doom  these  States  remonstrated  with  the  most 
supplicating  entreaties,  but  in   vain,  for  the   Hydra  was,  in 
contemptuous  disregard  of  them,  exalted  to  the  sacred  seat 
that  had  been  filled  by  the  form  of  Washington.     Even  then 
they  sought  in  fraternal  conference  for  some  guarantee  against 
this  hideous  policy,  until  their  entreaties  were  taken  as  con- 
fessions of  cowardice  and  weakness,  their  humblest  proposals 
received  with  sneers  of  derisive  scorn,  and  they  commanded 
to  furnish  men  and  money  to  murder   and  crush  their  own 
flesh  and  blood.     Then,  and  not  until  then,  did  an  outraged 
and  long-suffering  people  rise  in  their  indignant  might,  and, 
appealing   to   the    God    of  Justice,   resolve   to    cut  with  the 
sword  the    coils   of  this   mighty   constrictor,   and   crush   his 
heads   of  venom   beneath    their   feet.      And   this    Herculean 
task   must   be    done,   or   we   must   perish,   miserably   perish. 
There  was  a  time  when   submission  and    compromise   might 
have  postponed  this  fate,  though  perhaps  never  have  finally 
averted  it,  but  that  time  has  forever  gone  by,  and  now  they 
would  only  make  it  more  abject  and  complete,  adding  dis- 


DISCOURSE.  21 

honor  to  defeat,  and  degradation  to  destruction.  Never  since 
the  terrible  scenes  of  La  Vendee,  under  the  ravaging  hordes 
of  Republican  France,  has  the  old  heathen  war-cry,  Voe 
Victis,  (wo !  to  the  conquered  ! )  been  more  unmistakeably 
sounded  by  an  army  of  invaders. 

Let  this  tremendous  crusade  become  successful,  either  by 
mismangement  in  the  army,  or  cowardice  and  greediness  at 
home,  and  history  furnishes  no  page  so  dark  and  bloody  as 
that  which  would  record  the  result.  Our  best  and  bravest 
men  would  be  slaughtered  like  bullocks  in  the  shambles ;  our 
wives  and  daughters  dishonored  before  our  eyes ;  our  cities 
sacked ;  our  fields  laid  waste ;  our  homes  pillaged  and  burned ; 
our  property,  which  we  are  perhaps  selfishly  hoarding,  wrested 
from  us  by  fines  and  confiscations ;  our  grand  old  Common- 
wealth degraded  from  her  proud  historic  place  of  "Ancient 
Dominion,"  to  be  the  vassal  province  of  a  huge  central  des- 
potism, which,  having  wasted  her  with  fire  and  sword,  would 
compel  her  by  military  force  to  pay  the  enormous  expense  of 
her  own  subjugation,  or,  in  default  of  this,  parcel  out  her 
broad  lands  to  insulting  emigrants  as  a  feudal  reward  for  the 
rapine  and  murder  of  this  new  Norman  conquest:  whilst  the 
owners  of  these  lands  must  either  remain  as  cowering  factors 
for  insolent  conquerors  and  oppressive  lords,  or  wander  as 
penniless  and  homeless  fugitives  in  a  land  of  strangers. 

Is  this  picture  overdrawn?  Does  it  exceed  the  avowed 
designs  of  the  great  invasion  as  proclaimed  not  only  by  par- 
tisan journals,  but  by  those  who  profess  to  be  ministers  of  the 
gospel  of  peace?  Did  not  their  leading  journals,  at  the  outset 
of  this  war,  exult  with  gloating  delight  over  the  terrible  fate 
that  their  avenging  armies  were  to  inflict  on  us,  our  suffering 
wives  and  our  hunger-bitten  children,  'until  all  Europe  cried 
out  shame  on  such  fiendish  barbarity  ?  And  has  not  the  work 
already  begun  ?  Has  not  a  gallant  sister  State  been  trodden 
under  foot  by  an  insolent  military  despotism — some  of  her 
best  citizens  banished  to  our  own  borders,  (may  God  bless 
them,  and  enable  them  soon  to  return  to  a  home  untainted  by 
tyranny  and   outrage,)   others   imprisoned  in   loathsome  dun- 


22  DISCOURSE. 

geons  without  even  the  farce  of  a  legal  process ;  her  Legisla- 
ture and  Judiciary  insulted,  defied  and  overawed  ;  her  houses 
searched  and  pillaged ;  her  women  subjected  by  the  reeking 
ruffians  of  New  York  stews  to  those  outrages  "that  turn  a 
coward's  heart  to  steel,  a  sluggard's  blood  to  flame,"  whilst 
rights  of  the  common  law,  as  old  as  the  fields  of  Runnymede  ; 
rights  which  the  Queen  of  England  dare  not  violate  without  im- 
perilling her  crown,  have  been  scornfully  trampled  under  foot 
by  these  lawless  miscreants  ?  Have  they  not  repeated  these 
atrocities  as  far  as  they  dared  in  our  own  State  ;  in  Alexandria 
and  Hampton,  and  elsewhere,  where  the  gray  hairs  of  age,  the 
feebleness  of  disease,  and  the  helplessness  of  womanhood  have 
been  no  protection  against  insult,  robbery  and  murder  ?  Have 
they  not  made  war  on  the  sick,  the  aged  and  the  dying,  on 
childhood  and  helplessness,  by  making  medicines,  and  even 
the  Holy  Bible  itself,  contraband  of  war,  thus  by  a  kind  of 
Italian  revenge,  carrying  their  warfare  to  the  very  interests 
of  the  soul,  and  the  very  destinies  of  eternity  ?  Have  not 
their  most  magnanimous  men-of-war  bravely  bombarded  help- 
less houses  and  unprotected  villages  that  two  British  wars  had 
spared,  houses  and  villages  containing  the  sick  and  feeble, 
who  had  no  other  notice  of  their  danger,  and  whose  sole 
attraction  to  these  marauders  seems  to  have  been  their  weak- 
ness? Have  they  not  kidnapped  hundreds  of  servants  and 
then  made  them  beasts  of  burden ;  and  is  not  their  mighty 
armada  now  prowling  along  our  coast,  intending  to  arm  the 
rest  for  another  St.  Domingo  massacre  ?  Have  not  sovereign 
States,  whose  spindles  were  turned  by  Southern  staples,  and 
whose  coffers  were  filled  by  Southern  gold,  who  refused  to  give 
a  man  to  the  war  of  1812,  waged  to  protect  their  own  ship- 
ping, and  the  war  with  Mexico,  to  vindicate  the  honor  of  that 
flag  which  they  now  so  idolatrously  worship ;  yet,  now,  when 
their  own  flesh  and  blood,  their  own  brothers  to  whom  they 
were  bound  by  interest  and  gratitude  as  welf  as  affection,  were 
to  be  coerced  and  trampled  under  foot,  send  hordes  of  men, 
many  of  them  blood-thirsty  braggarts,  who  fly  like  sheep 
when  they  meet  men  fighting  for  their  firesides  and  altars  ? 


DISCOURSE.  23 

And,  although  we  believe  that  many  an  honest  heart  in  the 
North  is  indignant  at  these  outrages,  yet,  have  not  all  who 
have  dared  to  remonstrate  against  them  been  muzzled  by  the 
bayonet  or  silenced  by  the  Bastile  ?  And  if  "  they  have  done 
these  things  in  the  the  green  tree,  what  will  they  do  in  the 
dry  ?  "  If  good  men  of  the  North  in  private  life,  and  good 
officers  in  public,  have  been  powerless  to  prevent  these  things 
hitherto,  when  they  were  impolitic  as  well  as  cruel,  how  can 
they  prevent  their  most  intense  aggravation,  when  an  infu- 
riated and  conquering  army  shall  have  crushed  all  opposition  ? 
Must  not  our  fate  be  all  the  more  terrible  the  more  prolonged 
and  determined  our  resistance  ?  Then,  if  we  must  perish,  is 
it  not  better  to  die  the  death  of  a  man  on  the  field  of  honor, 
than  to  die  the  death  of  a  dog  on  the  gibbet?  Is  it  not  better 
to  meet  this  huge  barbaric  invasion  with  one  flaming  front  of 
defiant  resistance,  than  to  sit  hugging  our  treasures  until  the 
grip  of  the  invader  is  at  our  throats,  his  manacles  on  our 
wrists,  and  we  bound  helpless  at  his  feet  ? 

But  no  such  fate  as  this  awaits  us,  if  we  are  true  to  our- 
selves, and  true  to  God.  If  we  are  worthy  to  take  our  place 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  no  human  power  may  hinder 
us ;  for  eight  millions  of  brave,  united  and  determined  people 
can  never  be  conquered.  Battles  may  be  lost,  cities  may  be 
taken,  many  a  gallant  man  and  many  a  gentle  woman  may 
sleep  in  a  premature  grave,  and  many  a  home  be  shrouded 
with  mournful  memories,  and  yet  we  shall  be  unconquered 
still;  for  , 

"Freedom's  battles  once  begun, 
Descend  from  bleeding  sire  to  son, 
Though  often  lost  are  surely  won." 

The  swamps  that  sheltered  Marion's  men,  the  rugged  hills 
that  blazed  with  the  deadly  fire  of  Morgan's  riflemen,  the  blue 
mountains  of  West  Augusta  where  Washington  meant  to  make 
a  last  stand  for  liberty,  and  the  storied  heights  of  Yorktown, 
where  he  did  make  it,  are  still  standing  to  tell  us,  that  from 
the  invading  hordes  of  Xerxes,  of  Varus,  of  Farnese,  and  of 


24  DISCOURSE. 

Napoleon,  down  to  the  vanquished  columns  on  the  plains  of 
Manassas,  a  people  who  are .  fighting  for  their  altars  and  their 
firesides,  in  the  fear  of  God,  can  never,  never,  never  be  con- 
quered. God  will  maintain  our  cause  !  He  has  maintained  it. 
Starting  in  this  conflict  as  unfurnished  for  battle  as  the  strip- 
ling boy  of  Bethlehem  going  forth  to  meet  the  gigantic  Phil- 
istine, nothing  but  the  power  of  Jehovah  could  have  made  the 
arms  of  our  beardless  boys  to  vanquish  again  and  again  the 
stupendous  preparations  of  our  enemies.  In  that  God  we  will 
continue  to  trust.  These  brave  heroic  boys  may  fall ;  and 
though  many  a  weeping  parent  may  not  be  able  to  say  with 
the  noble  stoic  of  England,  "  I  would  not  give  my  dead  son 
for  any  living  son  in  Christendom,"  they  will  say  with  an 
humbler,  and  yet  a  loftier  spirit,  "  if  God  has  willed  that  I 
should  lay  him  as  a  sacrifice  on  the  altar  of  my  country,  I 
bow  to  His  will  with  unrepining  submission,  rejoicing  that 
though  he  has  perished,  the  cause  has  not,  will  not,  and  cannot 
perish,  for  God  will  maintain  it  to  the  end." 

Hence,  to  every  prophet  of  evil,  every  croaking  Cassandra, 
who  tells  us  we  are  too  weak,  and  must  perish  at  last  before 
our  powerful  enemies,  we  reply,  trusting,  not  in  our  own  might, 
but  in  the  strength  of  our  covenant  God — 

"Down,  soothless  iosulter,  I  trust  not  the  tale, 
For  ne'er  shall  our  brave  men  a  destiny  meet 
So  black  with  dishonor,  so  foul  with  defeat, 
Though  their  perishing  ranks  should  be  strewed  in  their  gore, 
Like  ocean  weeds  heaped  on  the  surf-beaten  shore, 
They  still,  untainted  by  flight  or  by  chains, 
While  the  kindling  of  life  in  their  bosom  remains, 
Shall  as  victors  exult  or  in  death  be  laid  low 
With  their  back  to  the  field  and  their  feet  to  the  foe, 
And  leaving  in  battle  no  blot  on  their  name, 
Look  calmly  to  Heaven  from  the  death-bed  of  fame." 


Hollinger  Corp, 
pH  8.5 


